


Other Half

by MessengerThief



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Codependency, Fluff and Angst, Other, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 17:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16309376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MessengerThief/pseuds/MessengerThief
Summary: Eddie doesn't think he's ever going to find his soulmate.





	Other Half

Eddie was never going to find his soulmate. He’d accepted that. Lots of people didn’t. There didn’t seem to be much logic to the marks, it could be their name, their date of birth, their first words to you and Eddie was a journalist so he knew that the urban myth about some people having their soulmates last words on them was all too true. Eddie knew he wasn’t alone in being alone. 

That said, he had to be the only person who knew he was never going to find them and it fucking sucked. He would never find his other half, the person meant to complete him. The inky black squiggles along his inner arm just below his elbow made no sense. They weren’t even words, just black wiggly lines. Some people were scared. One person, a guy he liked back when he was nineteen, said it looked like it was staring at him. Whatever, that guy was a dumbass anyways. So many people looked at them and frowned. “Maybe they just have really bad handwriting,” was what everyone always said. Without fail. As if they had to be the first person who’d ever thought of that. Eddie was used to shrugging and carrying on with his life, holding back the part of him that wanted to yell, “Who writes like that? Who? Why’d don’t you just point me in their direction if its that easy!” 

Sometimes he thought it was like a Rorschach test, people saw what they wanted to see. He just wished someone would see something that made sense, anything.

Only Anne hadn’t said anything. Just kissed the mark and for a moment Eddie hoped that maybe, maybe it would be her, but nothing happened. It was stupid to think that a mark so messy would ever represent neat and meticulous Anne. It didn’t matter though, because he loved her. He loved her so much.

She was nearly as unlucky as him. Her mark was a date, a year, just the year, right above her belly button. The year of Eddie’s birth but also literally hundreds of millions of other peoples. Eddie tried not to be happy about that, but he’d never met someone who understood what it was like to know you weren’t going to find them before. And it was hard not to be happy when he was so in love. He sent silent thanks out into the universe that it had given him Anne, someone as unfortunate as him, and promised her soulmate he’d take care of her. He told Anne that once when they were together in bed and a bit drunk. Asked her if she did the same. She didn’t. Eddie wasn’t sure why he’d asked, he knew she thought his soulmate didn’t exist, evidence of some cosmic fuck up littered on his arm. She said it was like whatever decided these things had spilled the ink instead of writing whatever was supposed to lead him to them. A stupid mistake. She used to joke that Eddie was the only case more hopeless than hers. 

That was until Dan showed up with Anne’s full fucking name written across his face in Anne’s small, measured handwriting. It was like a punch all over his body. She’d never been his, he’d never been hers. They’d just been pretending. The universe had compensated Anne for her fuck up of a soul mark with Dan’s being a giant ‘property of’ sticker. Wasn’t that great? Fancy doing that for him? 

It hurt so much.

He hated it. Tried to scrub the black off his skin like he hadn’t since he was a teenager. Back then he’d been angry but now he was broken. He wanted it gone so he didn’t need to think about it. Didn’t need the reminder that no one wanted him. It was like it was leering up at him. He swore he could make out a face laughing at him.

Back when he was a kind his mom had taken him to a doctor, well she’d taken him to lots of doctors, but this one stuck out. He’d said that maybe Eddie’s soulmate had grown up somewhere so terrible they’d never learnt to write. It did kind of look like a child drawing circles with felt tips, he said. Or that they weren’t very well, sometimes people spent their whole lives in comas and never woke up, or that they couldn’t hold a pencil because maybe they had no fingers. Five-year-old Eddie had started crying then and his mom had come in and taken Eddie away from the doctor. Eddie told her what had happened and there were no more doctors after that. 

His mom had taken him home and the next day they’d gone to the library where she’d showed him paintings by a lady who didn’t have any arms, she used her feet to draw. It was really cool. Then she’d told him that if his soulmate was in a coma then they wouldn’t be able to draw anything, let alone a mark with as many swirls as Eddie’s, or his soul mark would be typed up like hers was. And if his soulmate grew up really horribly where would they get felt tips pens from? 

It wasn’t comfort exactly, because it meant that Eddie didn’t have soulmate, but it was better because it meant that they weren’t suffering. He never quite reached the stage where he would wish his soulmate a lifetime of pain, if it meant they could exist, so he could meet them. But when he saw Anne and Dan together he wanted to. God, he wanted to. He wanted to let the hope back in no matter the consequences. 

Then there were the truly dangerous thoughts, that maybe one day he would come across someone with his name on their face and a weird love for doodling wriggly lines and he would look back at all this and laugh. But hope like that was dangerous. Because no matter how hard he hoped he never had enough faith it would actually happen to keep him going. 

He used to find purpose in journalism before Anne, put the drive most people put into finding their soulmates into uncovering the truth. He didn’t have that now but he did have that annoying doctor from the Life Foundation wiling to be his source and help break him in. 

When everything goes to shit in the lab he doesn’t notice the warmth snaking through his skin and settling under his mark, when Dan and Anne rip them apart with the MRI he’s in so much pain he doesn’t notice how he feels cold and empty suddenly. He only realises later when he works out that he feels worse now that Venom has left than when the alien was apparently absorbing his organs, which he thinks is weird but par for the fucking course the way his day is going. 

It’s only when they’re running away from Anne through the woods that he realises that he feels whole in a way he’s never felt before. He’s actually ready to dismiss it as having Venom back and being used to him already before Venom explains that symbiotes are born knowing who their perfect host is and how to find them. He was considered a loser on his planet for wanting to seek them out, without the intention to kill them. Because that’s what they did, Venom told Eddie as a feeling of horror filled them both, killed the one who could keep them in place. Why stay with one host when you could have many?

**I have found you. You are safe. You are mine.**

Eddie reaches out and rolls up his sleeve. He still can’t quite believe it. The mark looks the same but he thinks that maybe it feels warmer? Comfier? Like there’s a pleasant weight under his skin that feels similar to the way Venom feels but Venom’s not in his forearm, he’s shifting about around Eddie’ heart. Eddie gently touches the mark with his finger which is technically their finger and he’s glad Venom is wrapped securely around his heart because otherwise he’s pretty certain it would beat out of his chest, their chest, whatever. The mark begins to move at his touch, rolling and twitching the way Venom does and there is no denying it now.

It’s weird because he thought it would be stronger. He feels safe and warm and like he’s at home, even though he hasn’t had one of those since Anne threw him out and the middle of a wood chasing down an alien isn’t exactly a homely setting. Still, he’d thought there’d be sparks or some shit that people always talked about, he knew pretty much everyone who met their soulmate over the age of 16 jumped into bed together immediately. This isn’t that, there isn’t that urge to be as close as possible he’d heard about. 

**We are always together. Always close. We are not like humans who need to touch. You will always feel me, without me you will feel loss, feel empty but you will know where I am, if you concentrate, you will hear me wherever you are. My kind will look at you and sense that you are mine like Riot did. Just as your kind will see your mark and know that I am yours.**

Eddie starts laughing at that because how could he not have realised? He has the easiest fucking soul mark on the planet, he has his soulmate’s picture stamped onto his fucking arm. 

When he falls into the water and feels the warmth fade he panics. He starts screaming inside his lonely mind for Venom. Screaming and screaming as he breaks the surface. Oh god this is what it’s going to be like, alone inside his head, he’ll go insane. 

The quiet is oppressive when he finally stops screaming and he nearly wants to start again just so that he can hear anything when he feels it. The pull inside his head. He swims out a little more and there, it looks like black oil on the water, no different from any of the other fuel from the exploded rocket that’s clogging up the sea around him but he knows, he knows. 

When he scoops it up - him up - into his cupped palms and Venom melts into Eddie’s skin they know that they’re going to be okay. 

-|-

Lying to Anne about Venom was a bad idea because now they’re having dinner, its hot and Eddie’s made the stupid mistake of rolling his sleeves up to reveal the soul mark that’s constantly shifting and moving on his skin, an exact replica of the way Venom moves. 

Anne is furious about the lying, Dan looks worryingly curious and Venom is chuckling in a place only Eddie can hear. Anne stops yelling and looks at him, properly looks. Eddie knows he’s well rested and fed and that Venom is painstakingly good at taking care of him. It shows that he didn’t spend all of last night chasing down a case like he would have before, because he and his other had it wrapped up before 11pm. He’s better now, he’s finally complete and he knows that Anne can see it. He doesn’t feel lonely anymore. Venom hums with satisfaction inside their body.

**We’re whole.**


End file.
